How could I continue after Postcommand call to "Material Browser"?

[BinghuiLi]

Hello,

After opening the material browser using postcommand, is there any way I can get the element(Material) selected in the material browser?

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Binghui

[jeremy_tammik]

No. Sorry. Well, yes, of course there is, because you can do anything you like, but there is no support or other functionality provided by the Revit API to help you. You would have to take recourse to the underlying Windows API or .NET libraries to programmatically "scrape" the information from the UI somehow. That is pretty hard-core hacking. I am sorry to say I have no further advice to offer on that... What do you actually want to achieve? Why are you trying to mix the UI and API?

[BinghuiLi]

Hi Jeremy,

The idea is to have a button on one of my own add-ins to set the parameter value for the parameter by opening the material browser. Previously I simply listed all the material names in the combobox for my colleagues to choose from, but the feedback was that they still preferred to be able to select them directly in the material browser, where they can see the parameter and the picture more visually. 

There is similar functionality in revit's material parameter settings, and I thought maybe this could be done through the API.

[jeremy_tammik · Accepted solution]

Sounds perfectly sensible to me. Unfortunately, no idea how to programmatically extract the selected item. The Building Coder shares some hacking solutions in the Automation category...

• https://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/automation/

[BinghuiLi]

I solved this problem in a stupid way, reading the Journal file and reading the last determined material name...

internal class MaterialBrowserEventHandler : IExternalEventHandler
{
    public void Execute(UIApplication app)
    {
        GetMaterialText(GetJournalFilePath(app));
    }

    public string GetName()
    {
        return "MaterialBrowserEventHandler";
    }


    private string GetJournalFilePath(UIApplication application)
    {


        string filePath = application.Application.RecordingJournalFilename;
        TaskDialog.Show("test", filePath);
        return filePath;
    }

    private void GetMaterialText(string journalFilePath)
    {
        using (FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(journalFilePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
        {
            byte[] buffer = new byte[4096]; // Buffer to read file content
            string prevLine = null;

            // Start reading from the end of the file
            long position = fileStream.Length;

            while (position > 0)
            {
                // Calculate the position to start reading from
                position = Math.Max(0, position - buffer.Length);
                fileStream.Seek(position, SeekOrigin.Begin);

                // Read data into the buffer
                int bytesRead = fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, (int)Math.Min(buffer.Length, fileStream.Length - position));

                // Convert the read bytes to string
                string fileContent = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer, 0, bytesRead);

                // Split the content into lines
                string[] lines = fileContent.Split(new string[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None);

                // Iterate over lines in reverse order
                for (int i = lines.Length - 1; i > 0; i--)
                {
                    string line = lines[i];

                    // Use regular expression to match the part containing "OK, IDOK"
                    Match match = Regex.Match(line, @"OK, IDOK");
                    prevLine = lines[i - 1];
                    if (match.Success && prevLine != null)
                    {
                        // Match the field content in the previous line
                        Match fieldNameMatch = Regex.Match(prevLine, @"(?<=- )(\S+)(?= , Dialog)");
                        if (fieldNameMatch.Success)
                        {
                            string fieldName = fieldNameMatch.Value;
                            TaskDialog.Show("MaterialBrowser", fieldName);
                            Console.WriteLine("Found line containing 'OK, IDOK', field content is: " + fieldName);
                            return;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

[jeremy_tammik]

Wow. Congratulations! I call that a creative solution! Thank you for sharing it.